The King's Corrodian (25 page)

‘A wee bit close,’ said Tam. ‘Lucky I seen you, maister. What were you about, so near the edge?’

‘I – I was thinking,’ said Gil. ‘Wasny looking where I was going. Thanks, man!’

‘Aye, well.’ Tam cast a look at the Ditch. ‘You couldny rely on the dog to haul you out o that.’ He turned to walk along with Gil. ‘I’m glad I found you, but.’

He fell silent. Gil looked along his shoulder at the man. He had known him for years; Tam was not a lot older than Gil, had run at his stirrup in the hunting grounds of Lanarkshire, and it was clear now that his henchman wanted to ask something.

‘Out wi’t,’ he said. ‘What is it troubles you?’

‘No
troubles
, maybe,’ said Tam awkwardly. ‘No troubles so much as – aye, well, I’m troubled. See, I ken the mistress mentioned this lassie to you.’

‘Lassie?’ Gil searched his memory, and then recalled Alys’s tale of yesterday’s encounter. ‘You mean the young man’s sister?’

‘Aye.’ Tam stared hard at a flock of chaffinches squabbling under a bush, until Socrates loped over to investigate and the little birds flew up. ‘See, I’d to take back the lantern she lent us, the day, and I got talking wi her. She’s – she’s in a right uneasy position, maister, wi her brother deid, and the two bairns to protect, and she’s feart her man catches up wi her.’ He stopped speaking, biting his lips. Gil made an encouraging noise. ‘I was wondering, maister, if you’d maybe ha a word wi her. Advise her, maybe. She’s no certain how the law stands, and nor am I.’

‘You’ve a notion to her,’ Gil said. Tam coloured up under his fair thatch of hair.

‘I have,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve little hope, she’s outside my station in life, but I canny think when I was as taken wi a lassie. She’s valiant, she’s true, she’s stalwart. Her man scarred her face, sic a sight as it is, poor lass, but she doesny hide it. And the wee laddie – did the mistress say he’s blind? His faither did that to him, but he’s a merry wee boy. Minded my voice as soon as he heard it, asked straight off for another story.’

‘What d’you want me to say?’ Gil asked, reflecting that his uncle, whose servant Tam was now, would not be pleased if his groom suddenly left to support a family in Perth, and would be even less pleased if he brought another man’s wife to Glasgow.

‘I’m no right certain,’ said Tam. ‘What is there to say? You’re the man o law, Maister Gil, no me. Could her man insist she brought the bairns home? Can he order her back to him? It’s that kind o thing she’s fretting on.’

‘Aye to both,’ said Gil, ‘if the wee one’s still nursing.’

‘I thought that,’ said Tam grimly. ‘He’ll ding her to death if she goes, and likely the bairns and all. Hah!’ he said, without humour. ‘Yon woman last night wants her man back, will he, nill he, and here’s this lassie hiding from her man. It’s a strange world, this.’

‘Where does she dwell?’ Gil asked. ‘Can you take me there now?’

Despite Alys’s description and Tam’s warning, Gil had difficulty hiding his dismay at the sight of Mistress Rattray’s face. The thought of a man who could do this having charge over the two infants in the room was a chilling one.

‘It’s right kind in you to spare me the time,’ she was saying now. ‘Your man tells me you’re a man o law yourself? I suppose you’ll ha seen sights like this afore.’ She indicated her scars.

‘There’s nobody seen the like o’t,’ said her maidservant unhelpfully. She was seated by the other window with a basket of mending and was putting stitches in a small shirt; she had become quite flustered by Gil’s arrival, and Mistress Rattray had had to deal with the buttered ale herself while Tam introduced Socrates to the little boy, encouraging the child to feel the soft ears and long nose; the dog bore all with patience, dignity and the occasional friendly swipe of a long tongue, which made Drew giggle.

Keeping the pity out of his voice, Gil said honestly, ‘No. No where it showed,’ he qualified, thinking of Bess Stewart’s missing ear.

‘Aye, well,’ she said, pouring buttered ale into cups, ‘he did a bit o that and all.’

‘Have you witnesses,’ he asked, accepting the wooden beaker, ‘who could swear to you having those marks afore you left your husband?’

‘Andrew—’ she began. Tears started to her eyes, and she clapped a hand over her mouth. ‘I canny keep it in mind,’ she said, turning her head away, ‘that he’ll no support me mair.’ She swallowed, and straightened up. ‘Annie would swear to it.’ Annie nodded, looking up from her mending. ‘Those that were ser vants in the house afore I left it might speak for me and all.’

‘Eppie Craigo,’ said the maidservant.

‘Aye, you’re right, Annie. There’s maybe one o my neighbours, sir, Eppie Craigo that’s mairriet on Will Guthrie the apothecary, it was her Annie fetched to me that night once Skene was in his bed. She’d mind that, I think – it was the middle o the night.’

Gil nodded.

‘That might be enough. I’d recommend, mistress, that if he resorts to the law to get you back, you offer to return and walk about Montrose openly telling folk how you got the marks.’

‘Och, no, she couldny do sic a thing!’ exclaimed Annie. ‘And make him the speak o the town? I never heard the like!’

Mistress Rattray flinched, gritted her teeth, nodded reluctantly.

‘But mostly,’ Gil went on, ‘I’d suggest you keep out his sight. Is Perth far enough away, do you think? I take it you cam here because your brother was here?’

‘Aye.’ She looked round the chamber, drew a deep breath and let it out. ‘There’s naught to keep me here now, I suppose. I’ve neither kin nor acquaintance anywhere further afield, though. I’ll need to gie it thought.’ Tam, across the chamber, now playing finger-games with the boy, looked up at that, but did not speak.

‘You were close to your brother, I think,’ Gil said gently. ‘My wife tellt me he would come to you here once a week or so.’

‘Aye. He said he couldny rest without he knew I was safe. I’ve no notion how he got out the place, I’d ha thought it would be all barred and bolted, but he never got caught.’

‘Did his friends ken where he went?’

She shook her head.

‘We reckoned to tell nobody I was here. I go by Margaret Keithick, was my mother’s name, and it’s Annie does the most o the marketing.’ She stopped speaking, gazing at something Gil could not see. In the cradle by her feet the baby snuffled, stirred, found her thumb and fell asleep again. ‘It seems hard,’ she said at length, ‘when I’m in the same town, that I shouldny get to his burial. D’you ken when—?’

‘It’s no arranged yet.’

‘And madam your wife said,’ she went on, recollecting something, ‘that you’re looking into how he – into who – have you discerned anything yet? Who was it killed him?’

‘I’ve no discovered that yet,’ Gil said. ‘It’s certain it was one o the community, for there’s no sign any stranger got in, and there’s been another death and a man injured and all.’

‘Lord ha mercy on us!’ she exclaimed. ‘Is one o the brothers run mad, or something? Are they all taen to quarrelling like dogs? What’s ado, maister?’

‘I wish I knew,’ he said. ‘What can you tell me about the place? What did your brother say about the other men?’

‘Madam your wife asked me the same,’ she said, ‘and I could tell her nothing, but it set me thinking. I mind a wee bit more now.’ Gil made an encouraging noise, and she sat back, gathering her thoughts. ‘He spoke a lot o the fellows he studied wi, Patey and two called Sandy and another. They seemed to be good fellows, aye good-humoured and helping one another con their books. There was what he called second-year men – is that right? – that he got on wi and all, though one named Robert annoyed him a lot, he said he asked daft questions. There was the man that guards the books, whatever his name is, Andrew got across him a time or two, whether he wanted to look at a book he shouldny, or what, I’m no certain. His tutors, he’d a great respect for them, thought the sun rose and set in Faither Henry, and Faither John was near as important. Faither Prior he spoke well o and all.’

‘But?’ said Gil as she slowed down. ‘Did he mention others?’

‘I asked him about that one Wilson,’ said Annie without looking up. ‘Seeing I’d heard o him in the town, how he keeps asking more on the rent than’s due, so I asked the laddie, and he laughed.’ She sounded resentful. ‘It’s no a laughing matter, that.’

‘Och, Annie, he said as much himself,’ said Mistress Rattray. ‘What he said was, he’d heard the same, and one o his fellows better no hear o’t afore the Prior did, for that he reckoned all Dominicans should live perfectly by the Rule. That was what he laughed at, no the cheating on the rents.’

‘Still,’ said Annie. She bit off her thread, shook out the little shirt and folded it. ‘Will I make a start on the dinner, mistress?’

‘Did Andrew speak o any more? Any other names?’ Gil asked, when Annie had stumped out through a door in the far corner. Tam and the little boy were now playing with the ball that jingled. Mistress Rattray looked at them and smiled wearily.

‘The factor, what’s his name, Paterson? Patonson? One like that – he was assisting him a while afore Yule, found him honest enough but easy confused wi reckoning coin, was what he said.’ She grimaced. ‘I said, he wasny put in there to pass judgement on his fellows, and he said, no, but when the judgement was thrust at him he couldny help it. That’s about all I mind, maister. I hope it’s some help.’ She scrubbed at her eyes with the cuff of her kirtle. ‘I still canny take it in, that I’ll never see him mair.’

The fire in the guest hall was burning low. Gil kicked the logs, sending out sparks which flew up the broad chimney, and threw some more wood on. There seemed to be nobody about, so he sat down to wait for dinner, Socrates leaning against his knee.

On leaving Mistress Rattray’s house, he had gone into Perth, to spend a fruitless hour before the statue of St Giles in St John’s Kirk, turning over the two puzzles in his mind and coming to no sort of conclusion about either, other than to strengthen his conviction that the Prior was holding the wrong man. Whatever Alexander Raitts had been doing skulking about the cloister in the dark, it was not meeting Thomas Wilson in secret, nor knifing Henry White in an accidental encounter.

And where was the knife? It was an ordinary kitchen knife, with no sheath, no belt, no means of securing it to one’s person; whoever used it must carry it in his hand, perhaps hiding it in his sleeve until he came to use it. When not using it, he must presumably conceal it somewhere, but Brother Dickon and his men had searched the place, even to the point of looking behind the books in the library. So where was it hidden?

Out across the chilly great hall, the door to the yard opened. Socrates scrambled to his feet and Brother Dickon’s voice said, ‘Maister Cunningham?’

‘In here!’ he called, rising. ‘Come and warm yourself.’

‘I’ll no deny that’ll be welcome.’ The lay brother entered the small chamber, paused to return Socrates’ greeting, and drew a stool to the hearth. ‘Thocht I seen you come in,’ he added. ‘Drifting about like a boat wi no rudder.’

‘I’m not certain what to do now,’ admitted Gil. ‘My wife’s about some work she reckons will tell us what happened to the man Pollock. I can do little more there until she completes it, and it seems as if my other task’s done.’

‘Is it, now?’ asked Brother Dickon, without looking at him. The black cat padded in, raised its tail in greeting to Socrates, and jumped onto the lay brother’s lap.

‘You’re no convinced either?’ said Gil after a moment.

‘Convinced? I’m convinced we’ve got the wrong man.’ He turned his head to meet Gil’s gaze. ‘Aye, you and all. Sandy Raitts never killed anyone, no wi a knife any road. I can see him going wood-wild and battering a man’s head in wi a rock or the like, but no a knife.’

‘Was he in the library when you searched it, after Rattray was killed?’

‘He was.’

‘How did he behave?’

‘Better than I expeckit. He tried to chase us out, a course, Jamesie and me, wi our big boots and dirty hands, but when I showed him our hands were clean and minded him we’d a knife to seek, he let us proceed.
A knife? In here?
he said, and looked right troubled for the idea.
Oh, you need to find that! Heaven forfend it’s in my library!
he says. Sat there like a hawk on a perch and watched every move we made, especial when Jamesie laid hands on any o the books, but that was all.’

‘And when you finished?’

‘That was the odd thing. I said to him,
We’re done, we’ve found no knife, brother, your library’s no been used as a hiding-place,
and he crossed himsel and said,
Our Lady be thankit
. As if he’d really been feart it might be.’

‘I wonder …’ said Gil. Then, as an idea came to him: ‘Who searched the novice dorter? Was it you yoursel?’

‘No. Likely it would be Archie and Dod. Never fear, they’ve searched a house afore this, they’d ken to look under the mattress, feel the pillow, that kind o thing.’

‘Would they look for a hiding-place under the boards o the bed?’ Gil asked. What had the boy said? No, that was all, he had given them no more detail. ‘I ken one at least had something hid there.’

‘Had he, now?’ said Dickon, stroking the cat. ‘Right. I’ll ask Archie. And I suppose we’d best search the brothers’ dorter and all.’

‘It might be wiser,’ Gil concurred. ‘Is there any way you can search without folk noticing? We’d not want to spread alarm.’

‘No, I’m agreed there,’ said Dickon ambiguously. ‘Leave it wi me. And I’ll no be arranging to meet any o the brethren in secret, either.’ He stared into the flames for a space. ‘I might get a word wi the prisoner, but. Ask him what he meant by that. Had he maybe seen something made him suspicious, or the like, made him think there’d been someone in the library.’

‘What, is he still locked away here?’

‘Aye, and two o my lads told off to watch he doesny get out. Seems the Provost’s depute sent to say he’s from home the now, spent Yule at his landward property, can we keep Brother Sandy till he gets back. They’ll no want to pay for feeding and guarding him, likely. And the Bishop rode out early to one o his other properties, though likely he’ll come back when he hears o this. It’s no Father Prior’s best day.’